


Hollow Spirits

by Ironlawyer



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anger, Angst, Established Relationship, F/F, Memory Loss, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 08:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16194050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ironlawyer/pseuds/Ironlawyer
Summary: Carol is missing something. She is supposed to have her memory back, yet there is an emptiness inside her. No one will listen and nothing can help. Except Tony Stark and a bottle of Jack.





	Hollow Spirits

**Author's Note:**

> My hopelessly late contribution to the 2018 Carol/Jess Mini Bang. Set shortly after the end of Spider-Woman v1, no one remembers Jess after her ‘death’.
> 
> Thank you to magicasen for the beta.

Carol has a photo on her desk of a woman she’s never met. Her long black hair rests perfectly like something out of a shampoo commercial and the sunlight catches the green in her eyes. Her arm is draped across Carol’s shoulder and she’s smiling a brilliant, toothy grin that lights up her whole face. Carol’s chest goes tight and sore anytime she looks at it. It chokes the breath out of her lungs until she’s making wild animal noises, half sob and half howl.

There are fingertips dancing on the edge of her brain. A name and life half remembered. ‘Carol,’ she hears sometimes. A soft, breathy sound. The sound her name would make on the lips of a lover.

In reply Carol’s lips move around a sound she can’t place. A name she can almost feel in the back of her throat. She can almost hear her moans, almost feel her skin, soft and warm beneath hers. The woman’s taste lingers on her lips.

She stares at the photo and tries to burn the face into her mind but as soon as she looks away it drifts into oblivion.  Her fist breaks through the solid oak of the desktop leaving a pile of unfixable woodchips and splinters

She takes the photo from the frame, folds it carefully, and keeps it in her pocket. Five, six times a day she finds herself touching it. She has to remember this woman she doesn’t even know.

She buys a book of baby names and tests each one to see how they sound on her lips. _Sam,_ she says as she stares at the picture and tries to hold onto the feeling of warmth and love and… _Jane, Kate._ She even tries Carol. Nothing seems right.

She takes the photo to Charles. They sit down for tea and sandwiches on a balcony overlooking the courtyard and the sun and children’s laughter make her stomach churn as she fingers the now well-worn edges of the photo. When she lays the picture before him, he gives her that look. The sympathetic, fatherly look that makes her feel like she is five years old. ‘This is different,’ she says and knows he has no reason to believe her.

‘I’m sorry Carol, truly. I’ve done all I can. If you cannot remember her now, I’m afraid there is nothing I can do.’ He reaches for her hand but she pulls back, takes a sip of her tea, oversweet and milky. The kind of tea he serves to the children when they’ve had a shakeup. She didn’t come here to be patronised.

‘It’s _different_ , Charles,’ she repeats. All her memories of before are distant, emotionless, like watching someone else’s life though a TV screen. This time it’s all emotion, no memory. It’s this deep, unsettling feeling of an emptiness in her heart, a person who’s been scribbled out with permanent marker leaving painful, sticky residue behind.

‘Perhaps it feels that way, but…’

‘You don’t get it.’ Her tea is boiling over, dribbling molten over her hand and the table, spoiling the sandwiches, threatening the photo. 

‘Shit,’ she says. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ She puts the teacup down and tries to stop her hands from shaking. Charles hands her a handkerchief to mop up, but there’s an ugly brown stain on her pants now, one that won’t come out in the wash.

‘This woman,’ Charles says slowly as he finally stares down at the photo, ‘she obviously meant something to you. Perhaps…’ He hesitates, takes a sip of his tea to stall the words she already knows are coming. ‘Perhaps the Avengers can help you.’

She stares him down, but he doesn’t break eye contact, as if offering a challenge. _How much does this mean to you._ She imagines walking into that mansion, seeing their faces. Maybe they’ll think they are forgiven. Maybe they’ll think she’s gotten over Marcus, and the betrayal of it all, like it was just a petty argument. She wishes it was so easy to forgive, because she trusted them once and that has never come easy to her. Maybe that’s why it hurts so much; she let them in, she let them be people who could fail her.

She thinks of seeing them again, now. Maybe the rage that still burns inside her heart will swallow her whole and the stars that live inside her will go supernova.

Maybe they deserve to hurt as much as they hurt her.

Charles slides the photo back to her and she stares down at the face that haunts her dreams more than Marcus ever has. ‘If you knew her before,’ Charles says, ‘maybe one of them will remember her.’

‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘Maybe I will.’ Because she’s never turned down a challenge. Because this means more than she wants to think about.

He shakes his head.  ‘I wish there was more I could do for you.’

She takes the photo, sticks it in her breast pocket, over her heart, and gets to her feet.

‘Stay, Carol,’ Charles begs and she thinks that if she was a better woman she would sit back down.  ‘Finish your tea,’ he tells her. ‘Talk to me.’

She flies away without another word.

\--

It’s just Dutch courage. A little buzz to keep the blood flowing. It’s not that she needs it, she could face the Avengers sober, it’s just that she doesn’t see why she should. She pours a glass and lays the photo next to it on the counter. She wonders what happened to the woman she once was. She’s smiling in the photo; It feels like she hasn’t smiled like that in a long time.

It’s not like she’s never lost anyone before. It should be easy to let go of someone she can’t even remember. She remembers the day they told her Steven was dead.

She grabs the whiskey, sips slowly at it, lets herself focus on the way it warms her throat and chest. It reminds her of the menthol her mother used to make her breathe when she was sick as a child. _Deep breaths, Carol and you’ll be right as rain in no time_. It’s a different kind of cure-all, but a cure-all, all the same. ‘Deep breaths, Carol,’ she murmurs into the glass and downs the rest.

She pours another. She’s a hardy drinker, never had much patience for all the men who thought they could drink her under the table. Hardier still since she gained these new powers. Her system takes it better, she figures, treats it like the poison it is.

She stares at the woman in the photo. She’s beautiful, Carol thinks. The way she’s touching Carol like she belongs in her arms. Carol’s fingers itch to touch her, to run along the curve of her spine, to bury her face in her neck and trail kisses down her chest, lingering at her breasts.

She feels a shaking, desperate _need_ like her heart and lungs are being squeezed.

This time she downs the whiskey and when she goes to top it up, her hands tremble and it spills over the edge. A few drops slosh over the photo. She drops the bottle, watches it spill out across the carpet, reaches for the photo, wipes away the drop and reveals the stains, smearing the smiling faces.

She’s ruined it.

She puts the photo away and grabs the half empty bottle from where it lays at her feet. It’s not helping, not like she wants it to. She still has to face this.

Maybe the Avengers won’t even know the woman. Maybe they’ll look at the photo and frown and say _I’m sorry_ like they should’ve before. After Marcus, when she had faced them alone and terrified and it had taken words she shouldn’t need to share to make them see the damage they had done.

Maybe they will say sorry now and she will hear the words and put her hands around Captain America’s throat and throttle the life out of a national hero. The time has passed for apologies. _You don’t get to say that now._

There’s too much of her sanity riding on this though, too many sleepless nights and broken dreams of things that might’ve been real or imagined. She is tired of being half a person. The Avengers have taken enough from her, they owe her this much. She won’t be beaten by her own demons.

She slams the bottle down. Gets to her feet. It’s not her who should be afraid to face them.

\--

She meets Cap in the courtyard. He’s in full uniform, arms crossed, like this is a cross examination, not a meeting between old colleagues.

‘I need your help with something,’ Carol says as soon as her feet touch the ground. Like it doesn’t hurt her to ask. She’s not his friend. Not an ally. Not an Avenger anymore. No small talk, right to business.

‘Do you want to come inside?’ Cap asks like he thinks they're still friends.

‘No.’

She takes the photo out, passes it to him. Her fingers are shaking. He stares at the photo for a moment, then looks at her. Looks at her shaking hands, her stained pants, her unbrushed hair and _judges_ her.

‘Are you drunk?’ he asks and there’s something tight and heavy in his voice. In anyone else she might’ve called it fear. Captain America has faced down monsters and murderers and never once has she seen his eyes shining the way they do now.

She should tell him to fuck off, it’s not his place to judge who she is or how she copes. She isn’t even drunk. It was just one shot.

She might’ve said _it’s none of your goddamn business_ if it was someone else and he wasn’t holding that goddamn photo in his hands _._ Instead she breathes slow and wonders if he can smell the whiskey on her breath.

‘Oh god,’ he says and it’s barely a hiss, a panicked, desperate sound. She wonders if she’s about to see Captain America cry. ‘You are,’ he says, ‘you’re drunk.’ He presses the photo to her chest, holds it there against her heart until she takes it. ‘Why are you here?’ he ask and suddenly it seems too real, too personal. She wishes he had never seen that photo, because it’s precious and personal and _hers_ and she never wants Captain America to see that side of her again.

‘I’m not drunk,’ she says because there is nothing else she can tell him now and it’s not fair that he gets to be self-righteous. She tries to keep her voice steady, tries to keep her feet from wobbling. It’s not fair that she should have to. That she should come here of all places seeking… something. Thinking maybe they would welcome her with open arms and stumbled apologies and do anything she asked of them. Instead she’s met with judgement before he’s even heard her out. ‘I’m not drunk,’ she says again, this time firmer. He has no right.

‘Carol,’ he says, shaky and desperate and more bothered than he should be. ‘Please, please let me help you.’

And she knows he doesn’t mean with the photo. ‘I’m not drunk.’

She leaves him standing alone in the courtyard. She’s not drunk. Not yet.

\--

The bar is a dive, with dim lighting to cover peeling paint and sticky floors. Carol scrunches her nose at the smell of stale smoke and staler beer. That might’ve been a cockroach scuttling when she swung the door open.

This place sells whiskey and that’s all that matters.

She rests an arm on the counter and spilled beer soaks her shirt sleeve. Orders one, tosses it back, orders another. She feels like getting fucked up.

It doesn’t work as well as it once did. She runs her wallet empty and finds herself barely tipsy. She curses herself for it then, _Carol Danvers_ , always had to be special. She wishes flying would give her the same buzz still.

She places her last five bucks on the counter and waves at the bartender. Her hand shakes. She’s maybe a little more pissed than she thought she was but finds she doesn’t care. The bartender gives her a look as he tops her glass. She pretends not to notices and sips it slower than she’d like, but it’s empty soon and she has no reason to stay.

She ends up on the streets, wandering aimless, huddled against the cold she no longer feels. The snow melts where her feet fall and people stare at her. She’s always liked attention but right now she wishes she was invisible.

She kicks a lamppost on the way past and it crumples like wet cardboard and sags in the road, she should probably feel guilty; the city will have to repair that, and someone could get hurt. She’s beyond guilt though, just keep moving until she feels nothing, break away from the ache of emotion like she always has.

She keeps moving.

There’s a bum huddled in an alcove, barely protected from the snow and wind. He’s sleeping, not moving. Dead, maybe. She thinks she might’ve cared more once, then goes to sit next to him because she still wants to be a woman who can care about people.

She sits on the paving slabs and feels the chill of the stone rapidly warming. She doesn’t feel human much anymore. The man is sleeping. Close now, she can hear his breathing, it’s raspy, strained. She wonders if he’s sick. He smells of stale whiskey and musty, unwashed clothes like her grandfather used to, but he’s young beneath the shaggy beard and the worn out clothes - her age maybe.

She shuffles closer to him, wants him to feel her warmth, because she wants to be a person who still does good things for the sake of them.

There’s a half-empty whiskey bottle clutched in his arms, like a baby holds a teddy bear. She wants to take it. Maybe wanting to be a good person isn’t enough to make her one.

‘Hey.’ She nudges him, but he is deep in whiskey dreams. ‘Hey.’ She nudges him harder, rolls him a little so the light catches his face and reminds her he’s still alive in there. There’s something faintly familiar trapped in this shadow of a man but she’s known enough drunks in her time to dismiss it.

She should leave. She doesn’t belong in this place in this life. Go home, sleep off the booze and face the morning fresh. She should forget about this man and that photo and the lives that she might’ve had. There are a lot of _shoulds_ in her life.

She shuffles closer to the man and feels guilty for pitying him, guiltier still for thinking she’s better than him and better than this. She wonders what this guy’s story is. Maybe he has no story. Maybe she deserves this more than he does.

She takes the photo out once more, stares at it and thinks of all the things she remembers that she was supposed to forget – the Avengers, her family, her whole human life. Maybe there’s a reason she doesn’t remember this woman. She used to smile with the Avengers, they still have portraits hanging in the halls of the mansion, Cap and Iron Man and all the rest, smiling just like this. It seems petty, but sometimes she wishes she could burn them, burn down the whole fucking mansion and she finds her hands glowing and shaking and takes hours to calm down. Maybe life is better when she doesn’t remember.

She puts the photo back in her pocket and reaches for the sleeping stranger’s whiskey.

His fingers clench and he blinks owlish up at her. ‘Steal a man’s whiskey?’ He scowls then says, ‘I know you.’ 

She gets this sometimes - a double take occasionally, an old lady squinting like they’re trying to remember where they know her from. She used to think it was funny, people knew Ms. Marvel on sight but take the mask off and she reminded them more of some distant relation they hadn’t seen in years.

She flinches, now. It’s not that she’s ashamed; she deserves this and she isn’t hurting anyone. But she chose this because she wants to be someone different today. She wants to choose to forget who Carol Danvers is supposed to be, instead of letting life make that choice for her.

‘I have one of those sorts of faces,’ she says and knows it sounds sharp.

He sips at his whiskey, shrugs and says nothing more. She catches the smell of him when he moves, musky, stale sweat and unwashed clothes. He needs to drown whatever sorrows he’s got as surely as she does.

She thinks she used to be better with people. Hasn’t got the patience for them lately, hasn’t got the patience for anything, really.

She thinks of the photo. The horrible emptiness threatening to swallow her whole every time she looks at it and tries and tries to remember anything, like maybe she just hasn’t tried hard enough yet. Like the hole in her brain is something she can push past and she is failing. Sometimes she thinks she wants to fail. It’s easier to be this person. For strangers to walk past and catch her in the corner of their eye while they pretend not to notice, and judge her broken or lesser than them somehow.

Carol can understand this kind of pain.

‘No,’ the man says, ‘I know you,’ with more confidence this time. She studies his face then, tugs at that hint of familiarity she was trying to ignore, until she places him.

Tony Stark. Avengers benefactor and multi-millionaire. She laughs the deepest fucking belly laugh she’s had in a long time. There’s a certain fucked up irony to it, that she’s finding him of all people here and now. It shouldn’t be funny, but she hasn’t had a lot to laugh about lately.

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I know you too.’

And they say nothing more, because they are different people here. She doesn’t want to hear his story any more than she wants to give hers.

‘Are you going to share that bottle?’ she asks eventually, because they’re the only words worth saying.

He passes it to her with shaking fingers. She supposes there's still a hint of that philanthropist in him, because she would not be so generous. People think she’s a fighter because she spends her life punching things but really she’s always running. She downs the whiskey. She’s not ready to stop running.

They sit and pass the bottle in silence for a while, she leans her head on his shoulder and tells herself it’s only to keep him warm. It’s been a long time since she had real human contact. She wants to hate Stark and this mess they both are, wants to blame him for making this feel like it might be what she needs. She wants him to hold her and tell her everything will be okay.

She misses the woman she doesn’t remember. ‘I’m going fucking crazy,’ she mutters.

Stark’s solution is the simple one. He passes the bottle. They go back to the silence.

Only when the whiskey is almost gone does Tony speak again, ‘Listen, Carol,’ he says, uses her name like he knows her, like they aren’t two strangers trying to find some comfort where there is none. ‘I… I have to tell you something.’ Whatever this is, she doesn’t want to hear it.

‘If it’s not the best place to get another bottle, I’m not interested.’

He pulls his shirt up then. She flinches because it’s fucking cold and he’s skinny, and shivering already, but probably too drunk to really feel it.

His chest is withering. Ribs visible beneath tight, pale, papery skin that’s covered with raised lines of scar tissue that paint his skin like the strings of a spider’s web. It’s ugly, she thinks for a moment, then is hit by a crushing guilt. But, everything about them is ugly now.

She reaches out, feathers her fingers across his chest following the lines of scar tissue. Too personal maybe; booze makes her forget her boundaries.

‘It’s ugly,’ he says, ‘I know.’

She wants to deny it, to be the woman who would reassure him with a lie, but she’s a cruel woman and a crueller drunk. ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘it’s ugly.’

He pulls his shirt back down. Wraps his arms around himself. He’s shaking, maybe the booze doesn’t dull the pain and cold as much as either of them would like it to.

‘How did it happen?’ she asks. It’s probably rude, but he showed her this, so maybe it would be ruder not to ask. She wonders if the Avengers screwed him as much as they screwed her. Carol draws her fingers through the snow, watches it melt away as she touches it, and thinks anger takes more energy than she has these days. She wants to go to sleep.

‘I’m Iron Man,’ he says.

She snorts. It’s a reflex, she doesn’t mean to be so condescending, but here he is lying on the street wasted and pretending to be a hero. ‘Traded it for this, huh?’ It’s stupid really, because Iron Man or Tony Stark, he traded some kind of life for this one. She thinks, she used to be Ms Marvel, Binary, Carol Danvers, but it’s easy to forget who they were when she’s sitting here in another life with a bottle in her hand.

‘I’m serious,’ Tony says and he is. He’s calm and the words are steadier than should be possible with so much booze in his system. It’s hard to picture this destitute man in that shining suit, but it’s harder still to picture him in the suits Tony Stark once wore.

She doesn’t want to believe it, but it’s easy to. She wishes he’d never said a word and let her have this peace, but that was too much to ask. Iron Man is Tony Stark. She’s sitting on the street getting wasted with her old pal Iron Man. He fucked up her life and he’s fucked up his own.

She looks at him again then, the stiffness in the way he moves, the stained patchwork clothes, the way his hands shake and the sewer rat steep of damp and piss and booze hovers over him. He was rich and powerful. He was a superhero. She looks at herself then, the drying booze on her shirtsleeves, the way she hasn’t washed he hair in three days. She fits in here better than she ever did when they were both pretending to be heroes.

‘Or, I was Iron Man,’ Tony says. ‘I guess I’m not anymore.’

‘Some fall from grace, huh?’ Because she is feeling vicious and it doesn’t matter how low he is, she wants him to feel lower.

But he doesn’t look at her, just focuses on the dregs in bottle. She wants to rip it from his hands now more than ever. ‘Yeah, I suppose it is.’

‘That’s all you’ve got to say?’ She doesn’t know what she was expecting. An apology maybe. But this confession isn’t about her. It’s about easing his own fucking conscience.

It seems cruel that the world would give her someone who might’ve been a comfort only to laugh in her face like this. She wants to forget what she has lost. Forget what has been taken from her. What Tony Stark helped take from her.

Who the fuck is he to wallow here, rich man, superhero, elite, perfect life, surrounded by people who love him and choosing this life. Fuck him. Fuck him. She takes the bottle from him and ignores his protests. She wants to punch something. Wants to punch him.

Her fingers twitch and the glass shatters, because she’s always weak to the violence inside her. She shakes free whiskey, blood and shards of glass, wipes her hands on her pants because she doesn’t care.

‘I guess I deserve that,’ Tony says. Iron Man says.

‘You’re pathetic.’ _And so am I_. At least she has a good reason for it.

Iron Man. The Avengers. They did this to her. Marcus took everything and they let him. She wanted to be better than this, but as long as there are holes in her mind, she can’t move past the rage and pain. It doesn’t make her weak. Her hands are shaking and she won’t let Tony Stark see it. She is not weak.

‘You’re better than this, Carol. You should go home.’ He’s too calm for this. There’s a stillness in him, like he’s settled into some state of acceptance that Carol cannot reach. It makes her want to make him feel something.

‘You’re a drunk,’ she says and feels like a fucking hypocrite. ‘A waste of space. You’ve only ever been good for your money and without it, what good are you? I don’t see any Avengers here helping you, do you?’

He says nothing.

She going to go sleep in a warm bed, in her own home and dream about Tony Stark lying out in the cold and it’ll be the best sleep she has all week.

She takes to the skies. ‘Fuck you, _Iron Man.’_

\--

Her fingers shake as she turns the key. It’s the lingering cold, it’s the rage, it’s Tony fucking Stark and his smug fucking smile. She isn’t drunk. She opens the door, slams it behind her, lets the way the rooms shakes feel good and doesn’t dwell on it – she hasn’t slammed a door since she lived with her father. She wants to lose control, wants to fuck something up, wants to fuck _someone_ up.

Flying used to be her pressure release valve, but these days when her feet touch the ground she feels like a can of soda that’s been shaken too much; it’s dangerous to let the pressure out now. It’s only the whiskey that works these days. It’s the fuel in her, maybe, the fire that makes her Binary. She thinks she would do anything to give this feeling up.

She punches the wall and her hand goes right through the brickwork. The cold air touches her fist and she is not even bleeding. She would do it again and again until the building was nothing but brick dust and her knuckles worn down to the bone, but she already knows it won’t help.

She wants to destroy something. She wants to _be_ destroyed.

She hears the door open and hopes it’s Tony, stupid enough to follow her. She wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, wants to smash his head against the wall, and watch him bleed, watch him die. It’s a vicious thought and that should scare her but it scares her more that she knows how vicious it is and she still wants to do it.

She’s ready to strike when she turns. But it’s not Tony Stark at her door.

Leaning against the doorframe like she owns the place, is the woman from the photo. Beautiful, smiling, like the thought of her hasn’t put Carol though hell.

‘You’re really going for it, huh, Carol?’ she says and there’s something soft, almost shaken in her voice that doesn’t reflect the casual way she holds herself or the brightness of her smile. ‘Glad to see me?’

Carol is silent, muscles tenses, still ready to strike. She wishes that it had been Tony, because the room feels cold now, and maybe it’s the draft from the hall and new hole in her wall, but the way her hands are shaking as she clenches them feels like something more. Something she doesn’t want to think about.

She should feel happy, maybe.

After all this time searching, her white whale is standing there in the flesh. Carol wonders how she had expected this to feel, because it doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like there’s a stranger standing in her doorway.

There is no epiphany, no overwhelming barrage of happy memories. She thinks of grabbing the woman and shaking her and shouting until her voice goes hoarse, because this moment was supposed to be _something_. A culmination, a revelation. Closure.

If she’s honest with herself, she imagined it a bit like a detective novel. That she’d find the missing pieces of her life and slowly slot them into place and each step would make her feel a bit better and in the end she’d find her answers and maybe get a happy reunion.

But life never fails to throw Carol Danvers a curveball.

The woman steps inside, her movements hesitant. She closes the door and leans against it for a moment before she turns to look at Carol again.

‘Please say something. Talk to me?’ the woman says, like Carol has any idea who she is, and any idea what she should say. There are too many questions fighting to be the first words Carol says to her. It seems important somehow. _Who are you, why are you here, how do I know you, do you love me,_ they all seem shallow and wrong, but whatever words she is supposed to say here, she doesn’t know them.

‘Are you okay?’ the woman asks, and the words are sincere. Carol can hear the touch of hidden fear in them that she should not be able to recognise. It’s a loaded question though and however she answers it'll be wrong, so she doesn’t.

She want to run, fly, get out of her brain in the fastest way possible, because that is how she always faces hard situation. This time she stands frozen, stares at the woman she's supposed to know, and doesn’t know her. Doesn’t know herself. Doesn’t know anything anymore.

After a time, she snorts, turns her back to the woman and cross the room to the liquor cabinet. Maybe once she’d have cared to appear dignified around a beautiful woman, but everything here is ugly and there’s no point hiding it. She reaches for the cabinet and pulls out a bottle and tumbler.

Carol pours a glass, downs it, buys herself the courage she used to have for free.

‘What’s your name?’ Carol asks her, finally, and it feels like the most important question and the most intimate betrayal.

The woman hisses like she’s been shot. ‘Tell me you’re fucking with me?’

Carol is silent. She stares into the bottle and doesn’t look at the woman who makes her feel things she doesn’t want.

‘Please.’ The woman’s voice is shaking now and there’s a desperation there. The same desperation that’s weighing on Carol’s chest. Desperate for recognition; desperate to recognise. Carol can hear her step closer, feel her presence beside her, but she refuses to look.

‘What’s your name?’ Carol asks again, because there’s nothing else she can say. She wishes this hurt less. This time she takes a slug directly from the bottle because that’s the only way she knows to dull that pain.

‘Jess,’ it’s a choked, desperate sounds and she laughs then, ‘Jessica. My name is Jessica Drew.’

‘Jess,’ Carol repeats. It’s meaningless, just a word, just a name matched to the face, like an introduction to any stranger. She laughs too, because she doesn’t know what she’d been expecting. She puts the whiskey down on the counter and reaches into her pocket. The photo’s worn out now, dog-eared, whiskey stained, fading away like her memory of it. Carol looks at it again. ‘Jess,’ she says as she stares at their smiling faces.

‘I don’t know who you are,’ Carol says and maybe it’s cruel, maybe it’s unnecessary. Maybe she wants to fuck Jess up as much as she’s fucked up. She screws the photo up and throws it on the counter. It’s a relic of another life she’s lost.

She looks at Jess now, and the vindictive part of Carol studies her for the pain she hopes she’s feeling. She finds it there, but it doesn’t make her feel any better, so she grabs the bottle again and moves to the couch. She wedges the bottle between her knees and watches Jess crumbling.

Jess laughs. It’s desperate, hysterical, the sound of losing hope. ‘Of all the fucking people,’ she says but she’s not talking to Carol anymore, she turns her head away to hide the shine of unshed tears, but somehow, Carol can still read her. Carol _knows_ her. She opens her mouth to say her name, to offer comfort, but there is nothing to offer. Carol _doesn’t_ know her.

Jess sniffles, shakes her head and turns back to Carol now, pasting a smile back on her face that might’ve fooled Carol if she had never known her. ‘Typical, isn’t it?’ she asks. ‘I didn’t mean to leave you in the lurch, but I kind of died for a bit there.’ She starts to pace. Carol should be curious, she supposes, there’s a story there, but she finds she doesn’t care. She twists the bottle between her knees and wonders if she should just go back to Tony and get so wasted she forgets all of this.

‘I don’t understand,’ Jess says. ‘Why you’re the only one who didn’t remember everything as soon as you saw me.’

Carol sneers. ‘Me and memory loss are good pals.’ This is her fucking life, apparently. There is nothing. Worse than nothing: there is the absence of what she knows should be. Jess is a stranger like her whole life once was.

Jess freezes then. She studies Carol like she’s said something revolutionary, and Carol wonders how much this woman really knows about her life. ‘You think it’s because of everything with…?’ She trails off like she’s said something insensitive, and maybe Carol should be pissed, but she’s got her answer. Jess knows everything. She takes a slug of the whiskey and hopes she’ll soon be buzzed enough that she doesn’t care.

‘Marcus? It’s fine, you can say it. Apparently you know more about my fucking life than I do.’ It’s petulant, stupid, but as much as she wanted to see Jess before, all she wants now is to scare her away.

But Jess comes closer instead. She sits on the couch next to Carol, close, intimate. Carol wants to pull away and wants to move closer and doesn’t know which one would be worse.  

‘You really don’t recognise me at all, do you?’

Carol wants to protest. _I know you, I know you, I know you better than I know myself_. But as much as it feels like the truth, she has nothing left to make it so. She thinks _I love you_ , and thinks _I don’t know you_ and thinks the only thing she does know is that this isn’t fair.

Carol remains silent.

‘Fuck.’ Jess’s voice breaks like she’s in real pain. Carol wants to hold her, to comfort her and say the right words that will fix this, but she doesn’t. There are enough of the remnants of Jess scattered inside her for Carol to know what she is missing. Just enough for this to hurt like hell.

‘What are we going to do?’ Jess asks.

‘Nothing.’ _There is no we_ , she should say, but it seems too cruel and there is something aching inside her to make Jess smile. She doesn’t know Jess but she thinks maybe, she’s a woman who should not sound so unsure. Wrong-footed. She wants to lean into the warm and right and goodness that hovers between them in an interminable mist, but she also wants to walk away.

When Jess is silent, she thinks better of it.  Maybe she doesn’t want to be this vindictive, hateful person, because she loved Jess once, apparently, and Jess clearly still loves her. ‘I’m sorry,’ Carol says and there’s probably a lot more she should say, but she doesn’t.

‘Yeah,’ Jess says. ‘I’m sorry too.’ An easy pause, then, ‘We can fix this. There are people,’ Jess says slowly, without looking at Carol.

‘Yeah.’ It doesn’t sound sincere, but it would be harsher to say that she’s already tried.

There’s a long silence then, just the howling wind and the sound of traffic through the fist-shaped hole in her wall. Carol sips the whiskey from the bottle.

‘How much have you had to drink?’ Jess asks after a while.

‘Not enough.’ And Carol wants to say something more vicious, because who the hell is she to be asking, but she likes to imagine she’s above that. Jess _is_ someone, it’s Carol who knows nothing here.

Jess says nothing more. She knows Carol too well maybe - sees the tension, knows the words she could she say if Jess pushes the matter. It riles Carol that this stranger can read her so well.

‘When we first met,’ Jess starts to say and her words are careful, slow, like she’s not quite sure if she’s doing the right thing, ‘you’d forgotten everything about who you were. I did what I could to help you then. I’m not going to let you down now.’ It’s a nice sentiment, but Carol remembers none of it.

Jess is a good woman, and Carol can see why she loved her once. She wants to be close to her now, in spite of everything. She should get up, move away, put the physical space between her and this stranger that she desperately wants to want. But Jess is warmth and Carol is tired of being out in the cold.

She lays her free hand palm up, open in her lap, wishes Jess would take it and hates herself for wanting it. Wants to hate Jess too, for coming here and making her feel these things. For making Carol have to remember how to be a better person.

Jess’s hand starts to inch towards Carol and Carol pulls back, away, makes a fist. It’s petty, contrary, but she doesn’t want to feel these things. She wants to be the stranger to Jess that Jess is to her. She doesn’t want to want her warmth, or her touch, or the way she feels so right. Or she wants it too much, maybe. She never learned how to want things a normal amount.

‘I don’t know you,’ Carol says, and she’s saying it to herself maybe, because she feels like she ought to remind herself, because this woman could be home, if she could let herself have it.

‘You could learn to know me,’ Jess says. She rests her hand over Carol’s clenched fist and there’s some quiet feeling there that shouldn’t be.

Carol looks away from the wall now and stares into the bottle balanced between her legs. She thinks once she would’ve put it away and kissed Jess. ‘Sure,’ she says and lifts the bottle instead. With her other hand, she opens her fist and lets Jess hold her. ‘I can learn.’ She downs the dregs of the whiskey and tries to smile.

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback much loved, if you would like to like/reblog there is a Tumblr post [HERE](http://ironlawyer.tumblr.com/post/178755331412/fic-hollow-spirits)


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